Ola hires another former top Flipkart exec Saikiran Krishnamurthy

Cab-hailing startup Ola has hired Saikiran Krishnamurthy (also known popularly as Saiki among his peers), as senior vice president (SVP) to drive the company's growth, said sources. Krishnamurthy is the second high-profile ex-employee of Flipkart to be brought in by Ola in the last two months.

Last month, the taxi aggregator had roped in Harish Abhichandani as its CFO. Abhichandani was earlier the CFO of Flipkart's logistics unit Ekart. An Ola spokesperson confirmed the development to TOI.

Krishnamurthy, who was initially COO of Flipkart's commerce platform, was seen as being among the prized hires for the Bengaluru-based e-commerce giant in 2014-15. At the time Flipkart went on a hiring spree offering million dollar-plus salaries to Silicon Valley executives and consultants fresh from having raised $1 billion in mid of 2014.

Krishnamurthy stepped down as the COO when ex-Tiger Global executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy took over as the CEO at Flipkart last year. He was then made head of Flipkart's supply chain which includes Ekart and after sales platform Jeeves.

Earlier this year, Krishnamurthy, 41, quit Flipkart amid a senior level churn which saw a string of top executive leave. After quitting the web retailer, he headed back to McKinsey as a part-time advisor, where he had earlier served as a director.